


Crosshairs

by spiritofneglect



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Blackmail, I just love military au ok, M/M, Mercenaries, Military, Sniper lance, and sniper lance, blackmailed Lance, cause Lotor, hitman - Freeform, klance, might need to squint, sorta there sorta not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 20:03:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12092409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritofneglect/pseuds/spiritofneglect
Summary: Lance didn't know who was going to be within his crosshairs until they were.





	Crosshairs

His phone had been silent for a week, something he's grateful for. After working for Lotor for two years, lance’s body count had more than doubled than his original number accumulated over the 6 years he had served in the military. If he was ever caught, Lance would never leave prison, he’d be cremated there and ashes hosed down drains to forever live with the rest of the scum forever, where he belonged.  
He had gone from serving his country, working for the good of his people, to being paid to kill them. Saviour to executer. It made him sick.  
So in these periods of silence, he basked in some form of normalcy, he went to cafés, he drank good coffee from paper cups, he snuck into lecture halls and sat in libraries.  
But here, in this hotel room from Lotor, Lance returned to the man he is. In his late 20s, a mercenary, a gun for hire who lived in cheap hotel room after cheap hotel room, who owned four phones and loved only the weight of his rifle in his hands, bits and pieces splayed methodically around his across bad carpet, a cloth in hand.  
This was Lance McClain, a mobster’s personal sharpshooter. A traitor to his country. A man dedicated only to the weapon in his hands, to the bullet proof vest spread across his bedding, to the packs of ammo tucked in his bag, to the knives hidden in his clothing, on his body.  
He glosses his scope, peaks through it through a broken blind, where he’s pulled the curtin away. Perfectly clean. The room is silent, hardly his breathing is to be heard. It’s cast in a darkness of light barred out with blinds and curtains, with dirty walls and chipped cream paint. The silence is a blanket of calm, of familiarity that has settled over lance’s life with worrying ease. There is peace in these rooms, in these silences, only his breathing and the click of rifle bits connecting, bumping.  
The silence is shattered however, as one of his phones begins to buzz from the bed. Lance lowers the rifle, sits silent for a few moments, staring out the crack in the broken blinds. He sighs, gently laying his rifle on the carpet and uncrossing his legs, standing slowly to his feet.  
A few careful steps, toes between pieces of gun spread across the floor, and he’s before the blinking of an old Nokia flip phone. He let’s it buzz a few more times, and then his hand closes around it, flips it open.  
The room is silent, holding it’s breath, not even the mouse he spied earlier scurrying can be heard moving, it too trapping it’s breath for the moment.  
“Blue.” The low hum and squeak of a voice through the old phone, a few beats, “ok.”  
The call drops, a flat line disturbs the air as he holds it out in front of him.  
The mouse patters across the peeling plaster of glued on floor, and he flips the phone shut. 

There’s plastic sheets on the floor, hanging around the room from bars high above his head. A hole in the bottom of the wall. It’ll echo in here, it’ll bounce and shatter something. Lance rolls his shoulders, glances around the room, tip toes through the sheets hanging from the ceiling, it’s like a maze of them, in one small room. Apart from the door and the hole in the wall, there are no gaps, no open spaces. Only a small room in an empty apartment complex in construction, plastic sheets damaged with age, a faded chocolate wrapper in the corner.  
Lance moves back to the doorway, crouches to unzip his bag. He slips his headgear on first, switches on the headset.  
“Here.”  
“Good, you have 10 minutes to scope, they’ll be there for 8.40, far south bench. You will have a window of approximately a minute.”  
A minute, one minute. Once Lance’s scope lands on his face this person will have only seconds left of their life. Lance glances to his watch as he pulls a strip of foam mat from his bag, this person has exactly 9 minutes to live. Lance never needs a minute window. He’ll close them in his crosshairs, take a deep breath, pull the trigger has he finishes his exhale, when his hands are steadiest.  
Lance eyes the floor, places the foam mat where his elbows will be. Leaning to pull a clip from his bag, dog tags slip free from under his shirt and the glint of the silver has Lance still. They glint at him, his name in bold print glaring, his birthdate winking and blood type bold in the silver.  
He places the clip back, tucks away the tags with quick precision, zips up his jacket over the top. He takes the clip again, leans back to put it on the foam. And then his hands are back in the bag, and closing around his rifle. His heart beat steadies, from where it had stuttered as the voice filled him in, it has calmed and returned to normal. His rifle was his anchor, and in a sea constantly changing, swells churning and waves slamming, an anchor was important, so long as he had something to anchor it to. It was this analogy really, that kept Lance _Lance._  
He has to put effort in, keep certain morals to keep himself, should he let them go, that anchor would have nothing to even tether to, nothing to keep _still_.  
Lance has rules, Lotor knows that, and to an extent Lotor doesn’t step over them, he knows Lance would run if he did, knows Lance would drop off the face of the world. He has fallen so far that death even is better than becoming someone else. But Lance is sure that Lotor knows what he’s doing, Lance knows that he has probably done it many times before. Probably the only reason he kept him around now is because Lotor believes that if he slowly pushes change upon Lance he won’t notice, moulding a piece of him bit by bit.  
Lance likes to think he knows what’s happening, like he is stopping it. But Lotor’s patience is only worrying, the fact he hadn’t had a go at Lance was concerning on too many levels. It made his skin crawl and insides itch. Lance rolls his shoulders again, lifts the rifle free, sits back on his hunches as he begins to prep it. His hands move on muscle memory, his mind whispers the name of each individual part he reattaches it to his rifle. He takes his pick of scope, an extreme range one, his favourite. He sits cross legged, resting the rifle across his lap, pulls his computer from the bag. He tugs a chain around his neck, unclipps the usb. He plugs it in and the computer immediately responds, switching on and clicking, he types a password, the usb does the rest, booting it up and uploading all the login information he keeps on it.  
The computer’s screen lights up, all black but for the information he requires. He enters his coordinates, lets it run as he loads his rifle. Then his headgear, connected to the computer, bleeps as it honed in on his area and begins to pull information from all the weather stations. The wind direction and force, the weather, the threat of lightning. It begins to calculate angles for him as he sets up his rifle stand.  
He rests the rifle in the stand, goes prone behind it, begins to slow his breathing, screwing an eye shut to peer through the scope. He sees the open grass park in mere moments, does a quick sweep before he came to the park bench.  
“In position.”  
“2 minutes.”  
He raises a brow, the target was quicker than the scouts first thought, that or the traffic was lighter than usual. Lance calms himself, drowns out what is happening around him, the headgear helps. It is sound cancelling, it will muffle the reverberating of the shot through the room. As, even with a muffler on his rifle, being in an inclosed space could still deal tremendous damage to his ears. He needs to be able to hear if he wants to keep his job. If he wants to keep anything at all.  
_I hate this._  
His breath is even, finger steady where it sits beneath the trigger.  
_I hate this so much._  
Lance sweeps the area around the bench, doesn’t see anyone.  
“One minute, he’s approaching.” It’s a he, Lance notes.  
_Fuck Lotor._  
“He’s nearly in position, remember, only a minute window.”  
_Fuck Lotor. Fuck this. I hate it. I hate it!_  
Lance’s finger balances over the trigger, it feels calming against the pad of his gloved finger. There’s movement, and the man appears from behind a tree, approaching the bench. There’s a paper cup in his hand, a hand that leads up a bare arm, to a tight dark shirt that matches black jeans, heavy boots.  
Lance’s heart stops as right there, right in his cross hairs, is a black mullet. But this isn’t just some mullet this is the mullet. The mullet that belongs to the man he had grown close to during his time serving. They had only referred to each other in last name, everyone did that, it was the norm there. But he can remember, remember how their first names had slipped from their lips when his hands had cradled his face.  
_Soft skin, a thumb brushing the grime off his cheek, warmth spreading from his palms, Lance soaks it up, soaks it all up until his whole face is warm. His hands trembling when they close over Gyeong’s, cups them against his cheeks. He doesn’t want him to let go, he doesn’t want to lose this. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Gyeong isn’t here, his rifle is empty, they’d used all the ammo they had, every last bullet. All of Lance’s side arms, all of Keith’s._  
_Gyeong presses their foreheads together, breathes in a shaky breath, refusing to break eye contact even as the building around them begins to crumble._  
_“Keith.” Heart stuttering, throat closing up, eyes stinging, “my name is Keith.” And then Lance can breath._  
_A whisper, just slipping past his lips, a return, a promise. “Lance.”_  
Lance heart hammers in his chest, Keith sits on the bench, staring out at the park. He looks hardly a day older, but he is obviously clean, no smears of dirt and grime across his face, no singed ends of hair or broken lip, no dry blood cracking across his skin. This is Keith. This is his Keith.  
“Take the shot.”  
Can he? Does Lotor know who Keith is, did he know that Lance feels things for this man he has never felt with anyone before nor after? Does Lotor know just who it is at the end of lance’s rifle?  
_Do you?_  
There’s a dumb numbness creeping up his spine, coating him like a second skin, soaking into his bones.  
_Why is he here?_  
“Take the shot!”  
_What did he do to end up here, in his cross hairs, so long after his service?_  
His computer reaffirms the data in his ears, tells him the wind, tells him the angle. Lance guided his rifle just a little to the left, he can just make out the details of Keith’s face.  
“Blue.” Lotor. “If you do not take the shot, then I will.”  
_What?_  
Lance jerks slightly, he doesn’t have time to look around, he has maybe 20 seconds of a window left. Keith, had he been anyone else, would have been dead 30 seconds ago.  
_Dead. 30 seconds ago. He would be dead for 30 seconds already._  
Lance’s heartbeat picks up, he thinks it might crack his ribs, it pounds through his head. The computer speaks again, same data, no need to move. Lance shifts the gun above Keith, so he is no longer even in his scope. He can shoot now, right now, Keith will hear it, he’ll dive the moment the sound even reaches his ears. Lotor won’t be able to hit him then.  
_Silencer._  
And then Lance is moving, he has 12 seconds.  
“Blue-“  
“I’m realigning,” he chokes, yanking his rifle back, leaning forward, beginning to unscrew his suppressor. His arms feel strangely light, like he can’t feel them properly. Panic is blooming hot and breath stealing in his chest. The silencer drops, is in his hand. Then Lance is forcing the rifle back in position, is peering down his scope.  
5 seconds.  
“Blue, I’m lining up.”  
“I’ve got him.”  
That black mullet, that clean face, a body holding a paper take-away cup, dipping down to drink from it. Crosshairs upon his forehead.  
Lance inches up, inhales, computer sounds again, exhales - fires.  
The boom and echo of the shot ricochets through the room, Lance’s ears are almost ringing even with his headgear. He doesn’t let the discomfort settle in his arms, in his hands however, he doesn’t reload, just peers down.  
Keith is nowhere to be seen, a second shot rings loud across the park, people are scattering like ants, Lotor is somewhere, Lotor wants Keith dead.  
“Blue! You missed!”  
Lance is already pulling back, disarming his rifle. He doesn’t bother making sure everything is neat, a third shot in the park. Lances’s heart is in his throat, and his head is rushing with blood. He throws his equipment in his bag, manages to get his rifle in mere moments later. He tugs the headgear off, rips the device from his side, stomps on it, throws it in after his sniper. Yanks the usb from the computer that immediately shuts down, wiping all it has been doing.  
Everything in, he almost breaks his bag in his haste to close it. Lotor’s men would be moving in on him, they know, they had too, that he missed on purpose. Lance never misses, and he just did, he hesitated, missed. They had to know it was purpose. That he removed his silencer.  
Lance tears through the building, jumping down the stairs three at a time, bag hooked over his shoulders, hand that wasn’t steadying him on the railing was pulling his side arm free, the desert eagle .50 pistol, usually heavy in hand, is light. Light footsteps, careful balance, two hands for the pistol, magazine slots in, pulling back to reveal the chamber, he lets go and it slides back into place.  
Loaded, Lance jumps the final half of flight to the landing, and uses his shoulder to slam through the door.  
He runs in a duck to his getaway bike, unmarked and unlicensed. He sweeps it every day for trackers, this morning was no exception.  
Someone rounds the corner, pulls a gun up, “Lotor wants-“  
Lance fires, headshot, and the man falls. His bike is the only thing on the ground floor, and he swings his leg over it, fire arm back in his thigh strap, jams the key in to start to the engine, tugging his hemet quickly over his head and the tires smoke as he skids away.  
The bike flies through the building in a flurry of skids and roars of the engine. He floors it down the alley, leans far to the right to enter another. He has a truck ready, one he had organised, one he’d purchased from some old guy who didn’t need it anyone. He’d switched the plates with fakes, repainted the truck and changed the tires with old ones with hardly any tread. He won’t going to be going fast anyways.  
It takes 5 minutes to get there, 5 minutes of carefully planned backstreets and alleys to reach his parked truck. Lance slows as he approaches, pulls the keys from his pocket. He kills the engine immediately, makes quick work of pulling the back of the tray down and he rolls the bike up and into the back. Securing in quick, practiced movements, Lance is driving in just under two minutes.  
Police cars whirl past him down streets and Lance removes everything covering his face but for a baseball cap and glasses.  
His free knee bounces, fingers drum on the wheel and he tugs his bottom lip between his teeth, chews on it.  
_Lotor. The fucker._  
Every fibre of Lance is telling him to turn around, to find out what has happened. To find Keith Gyeong alive and well, maybe hiding in some bushes. To cup his cheeks like he had done for Lance, to thumb across his cheeks, he’d hold his eyes, he’d give him an anchor. He’d whisper his name, watch Keith’s falls from his lips as loosely has his once had. He’d protect him.  
But he knows he can’t go, he’d been the one to take that first shot, he was the hitman, they’ll try to connect him to everything. Keith will hate him. Lotor will take him.  
_Lotor is going to do it._  
_Lotor is going to crush what it is he holds over Lance’s head, and Lance will have to stop him, have to die._  
He indicates left, truck rumbling as he leaves the city, leaves Keith somewhere in that park.  
He’s alive.  
Lance swallows, his throat burns, his gut clenches as his heart thumps in his throat.  
_I warned him, I saved him, Lotor isn’t such a good shot._  
Lance’s hands tremble even as he clutches the wheel. He needs to disappear, he needs to vanish.  
_“It was good serving with you General Shiro,” Thrace offers his hand and Lance shifts his feet. He doesn’t want Shiro’s company to go, doesn’t want Keith to leave. Lance looks up, meets his eyes. This’ll likely be the last time they ever meet. Lance’s heart thrums in his chest, a high pitch hum fills his ears. Keith doesn’t turn his eyes away, just holds his gaze. Lance wants to go with Shiro’s company, not only for Keith too, but to get away from his own._  
_“The pleasure was all mine.”_  
_A handshake and Shiro seems to hesitate before turning, and his company turns down a different trail. Lance doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t want to drop Keith’s gaze. But then there’s Rolo’s hand on his shoulder, and Lance turns away, the mud sucking at his boots._

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! thanks for reading, I enjoyed this so I'll make more chapters if anyones interested.  
> But otherwise this'll just be a one shot!


End file.
